aerospace-founder
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Aleksey Matyushev Is Betting That Aviation’s Next Leap Is a Change of Shape
The Natilus co-founder spent years learning how aircraft behave. Now he is trying to prove that commercial aviation can change its economics by changing its silhouette.
David Zagaynov
David Zagaynov is the CEO and co-founder of Poseidon Aerospace, a San Francisco aerospace startup building unmanned, runway-independent cargo aircraft. A UC Berkeley computer science graduate and former Amazon software engineer, he co-founded the company in 2023 with Parker Tenney and Isaac Baumstark around a shared obsession with the ekranoplan, a Soviet Cold War boat-plane that skimmed just above the water. Poseidon is developing the Heron seaplane and the Egret short-takeoff aircraft, each designed to haul up to two tons of cargo over 1,500 miles. The company raised an $11 million seed round in November 2025 led by Tamarack Global, after a $1.4 million pre-seed led by Starship Ventures.
Halen Mattison
Halen Mattison is the co-founder and CEO of General Galactic, an El Segundo space-propulsion company building Genesis, a water-fueled engine that aims to combine hydrazine-level thrust with xenon-level efficiency. A former SpaceX engineer who worked on propellant generation for Starship, he left after being told his Mars-fuel vision was too long-term, studied at Stanford, and started the company to build the propulsion and propellant infrastructure he believes will become a railroad to Mars. The company raised roughly $9.9M across pre-seed and seed rounds and first emerged converting CO2 into methane on Earth before sharpening its focus on high-agility spacecraft and water-based propulsion.
James Dorris
James Dorris is the co-founder and CEO of Odys Aviation, a Long Beach company building long-range, hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft that take off and land like a helicopter but cruise like an airplane. A former fusion physicist who started at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, he helped build the propulsion and levitation tech at Virgin Hyperloop One before turning to flight. At Odys he is chasing aircraft that can lift off from a helipad, fly up to 1,000 miles on a hybrid system, and cut regional travel emissions sharply while serving defense, logistics, and passenger markets.